Monthly Archives: April 2006

…and into the frying pan with the shortest of detours to rub down with a seafood rub (garlic powder, kosher salt, ground black pepper, lemon zest, herbes de provence). This was a truly delicious supper last night and the rub was the secret. Well – apart from the fish being REALLY fresh.

With any fish you have to work with care. It is delicate, tender and easily hurt. But it is actually a crime to be rough with truly fresh fish because the freshness makes fish perfect. I knew I wanted to fry it very fast until just cooked and I like a small amount of a strong rub on delicate fish like snapper, so I concocted the rub above with what I had at hand, rubbed it carefully and evenly into both sides of all the fillets and fried rapidly in olive oil: 2 minutes one side, one minute the other. I had a warm plate ready, put the fish on it and rapidly deglazed the pan with lemon juice and white wine. I poured the sauce over the fish and served it with orzo aglio e olio, asparagus and wilted spinach.

A quick glance down will see that I have been far behind in my posting here. VERY far behind. A careful reading between the lines should show you that the reason is work. But I’m going to take the first real signs of Spring in the Bay Area (it actually stopped raining) as an indication that it is time for some personal Spring cleaning. That means that I am not going to let my job rule my life anymore. At least not completely. However, I have left this decision late. Technically speaking, Friday is the launch of the next Paper Chef. But I’m not ready – at all. So…we are going to do it next Friday. Friday the 14th.

Other items of and for renewal – I’m going to take the trouble to refocus the blog back on its original purpose – the food I’ve cooked recorded so I don’t forget about it – and some other interesting writing I’ve done for the same reason. Although I have a new project in that area that I’ll stick up here in a later post.

Looking back, this blog has been going for almost four years – although it has only been actively posted to for three years. In that time I have made 382 posts. That’s about a post every three days which is a pace I am very comfortable with. But lately I’ve been doing a post every two weeks or so – not good enough. I am going to go back and look at some of the old posts and see what worked and what didn’t and try to do more of what worked and less of what didn’t – a radical step but I’m a radical person.